


Episode Ӫ: Market Day

by Seither



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Horror, Radio, The Weather (Welcome to Night Vale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2399741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seither/pseuds/Seither
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new Night Vale Cooperative Market is drawing all kinds of attention with its local wares and frequent sales. Cecil gives us the scoop on that, as well as the impending Bee-Fest, a look at the Community Calendar, and Animal Control's uniforms.<br/>Written like an episode of WtNV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Episode Ӫ: Market Day

Yesterday is a mystery that disappears, bit by bit, into what we call the past. Tomorrow is also a mystery, but one that shows its face for a moment in the land we call the present, before sliding away behind us, never to be seen again.

Welcome to Night Vale.

[Opening theme plays]

Today is the grand opening of the new Night Vale Cooperative Market, located right near the Night Vale Community College. The Market, run by Erika Montez, claims that it will be a cooperative effort to bring a little more pride and family bonding throughout the greater Night Vale community. She said that the ability to swap household wares, try some locally grown produce and wheat-and-wheat-byproduct-free bread, and buy and sell your old furniture will be invaluable to making our little town that much more of a family. She then sunk back into the old sofa that she was sitting in, eventually sinking so far that she vanished completely, like a rock sinking into a puddle of quicksand. She really is a fantastic saleswoman.

The city council wishes to remind everyone that this Friday is the 4612th Annual Bee-Fest for the town of Night Vale. Don’t forget to bring out all the insectoid creatures that you have, as a sacrifice to the mighty Bees. Their yearly appeasement helps keep our town happy and thriving. As you know, dear listeners, the city council also banned all types of six-legged insects, as well as all flying insects, last year due to an outbreak of West Nile virus. Arachnids are fair game, but are not recommended. If anyone happens to have an illegal but extensive six-legged or flying insect collection, please speak up. The Sheriff’s Secret Police will be with you shortly. 

Let’s go to the community calendar. Thursday is International Pancake Day. There will not be any particular celebration about that, I just felt it was a cool little fact. Friday, along with the Bee-fest, will contain within it a number of sales, most notably a half-off sale on all bee-themed items down at the Night Vale Cooperative Market, and a special honey pizza coated in spiders made by Big Rico himself, primarily to appease the mighty Bees, but also to share with the community at large if any is left after the Bees have passed. Saturday is a secret, kept safe within the city council’s gilded halls and locked boxes, until the correct time when it shall at last be revealed. Sunday will bring another sale at the Night Vale Cooperative Market, this time on organic hand-made soaps and tea leaves. Old Woman Josie will be coming from out behind the car lot, and setting up a stall next to the Market to ask the angels to read your tea leaves, for only three dollars per reading. The Sheriff’s Secret Police will be setting up a reeducation booth directly behind the exit of Old Woman Josie’s booth, and wishes to remind you that angels do not, never have, and never will, exist.

Monday will – oh. Hmm.

Listeners, Intern Janet has just given me a handwritten note reading “Beware the lack of lacking,” written in large block letters by what could either be blood or a particularly pungent crayon. Below that, it reads, in a more regular font “The sense of foreboding you feel is not caused by an internal sense of doom that hangs over us all like a buzzing helicopter. It is from without. The void is opening up to reveal that there is something behind the nothing that blankets over the roofs of those who cannot speak. Do not buy a new luxury chair and sofa set today only at the Night Vale Cooperative Market.” The “Do not” of that last sentence seems to have been drawn in later by that same pungent writing implement. I don’t know what all this is trying to tell me, but I am sure that someone out there isn’t welcoming the new Market the way that we all should. I don’t want to point any fingers here, but I might be motioning vaguely over in the direction of that Steve Carlsberg. Steve Carlsberg. I don’t know what you think you’re up to, Steve Carlsberg, but I’ll have you know that the Night Vale Cooperative Market will be a fantastic boon to our town. I don’t know what sort of grudge you might hold against fairly priced local markets, Steve, but you have no place airing those grudges in the open. Remember that slogan we all learned back in kindergarten: “Don’t talk about your anger. Let it stew. Let it fester like a boil in the sun until it finally bursts your essence open.” Do we really have to go back to basic life lessons, Steve Carlsberg? For shame.

The city council has issued another important statement, saying that we must all be aware about the threat of bunnies. They are out there, listeners, and they are coming for us. Three people have already fallen victim to this peril over the past twenty-four hours. Lock your doors and board your windows shut. But it is too late. The bunnies are already inside. You will try and hide behind your sofa, purchased just last week from the Night Vale Cooperative Market at low, low prices. This will not work. After reading this message, the council rolled up their respective statement scrolls with a flourish, and promptly fell backwards into a set of cheap lawn chairs, which seemed to shimmer with a hideous green intensity until the chairs, and the council within them, had vanished. They did not mention exactly who had suffered such a terrible fate, but we at Night Vale Community Radio can only express our deepest condolences.

The staff of Dark Owl Records will be holding a poetry slam next Friday, instead of this Friday for obvious bee-related reasons. The slam will be held at 7:30 pm, with coffee and pastries available for participants. The winner of the poetry slam will receive a miniature bloodstone keychain, as well as a free membership to their Album-of-the-Month Club. The runners-up will receive a registration to the Dark Owl Poetry Club’s weekly meetings to be taught how not to fail miserably at all things poetry. Meetings for that will be in the back room of Dark Owl Records, held whenever you happen to find a curled-up old piece of aluminum foil placed gently in your mailbox or mail slot.

We’ll be right back after this word from our sponsors.

[Pre-recorded segment]  
Are you tired of examining the eternal vastness of the void and finding it lacks a certain…existence? Do you wish to see something instead of the potential for something being swallowed up by the vastness of the nothing? What even is nothingness? Who are you? How did you get into the supposed security of my home? If you want answers, come out to the Sand Wastes and dig straight down. You will get tired. Blisters will form on your hands and feet, but you will keep digging. Eventually, you will find a small wooden box. Pick up the wooden box and rebury it elsewhere in the Sand Wastes. Return to your homes. Nothing has changed.  
This message brought to you by Wal-Mart.  
[Pre-recorded segment ends]

*gasping*

Listeners, we may have a terrible, terrible catastrophe striking terror into the hearts of our citizens. Previously on the show, we endorsed the new Night Vale Cooperative Market for its local products and frequent sales. Allow me to retract that endorsement. Intern Janet gave me a small desk lamp from the Market to replace the old and frequently-inverted one I currently have shining bright darkness all over my recording booth. As soon as I switched it on, a small nest of squirrels began to grow insidiously and rapidly in the corner of my booth. At first there were only two, but soon there were more. So many more. They began to swarm around the desk lamp like moths to an open flame, and hissed ferociously at any attempt to get near their creator. I somehow managed to roll the squirrel ball through the door of my booth with only minor injuries on my hand and slammed the door shut. Intern Janet was outside of the booth, and is out there now and still texting me messages of what is happening to Night Vale. Oh listeners, we are all in terrible danger. Do NOT turn on any device that you have received from the Night Vale Cooperative Market. If you have a device or a piece of furniture in your home that was purchased from there, remove it from your home immediately. There is still hope for you. If you have ingested any food from the Market, then I fear you may already be dead. If you are not in your homes, get inside them, or at least keep as far away from the Night Vale Cooperative Market as you can. The wares are cursed and bring with them vicious wild animals that you have no business keeping in your homes. Animal Control is prowling the streets in their polka-dotted deerstalkers and armored lederhosen, and until they give the all-clear in the form of an all-accordion rendition of Beethoven’s 6th symphony, none of us are safe. Be careful, Night Vale, as I take you now to the weather.

[Spooky Scary Skeletons]

Listeners, as I’m sure you have heard by the blaring sound of half a dozen accordions, the danger is past. Animal Control managed to round up all of the malevolent beasts summoned by the wares within the new Night Vale Cooperative Market. The Market itself has been closed indefinitely and forcibly by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. The Sheriff himself lead a daring charge into the storefront, which was occupied by what the official statement refers to as “a lot of animals. No seriously, there were like 50 of them. Never mind that they were only mice. They were, in fact....um...bears. Or lions. Or something else ferocious. Yeah, that’s what we faced.” Several men were lost to these vicious wild animals. The body of Erika Montez was found in a back room, having been chewed to a pile of bones by locusts. On the bones were a set of strange glyphs, that have been translated to read “We have always been here, and we will not be deterred by mere death.” She really was a fantastic saleswoman. The Sheriff’s Secret Police then arrested the swarm of locusts for violating the ban on winged insects, and burnt the Market to the ground. Good riddance. 

Intern Janet’s body was also found near the building, having been torn apart by the swarm of squirrels that had previously covered my new desk lamp. From what we can tell, she managed to make it within a few blocks of the Market before her legs were torn out from under her and eaten by those twisted abominations of nature. Our hearts go out the family of Intern Janet. She will be missed.

You know, listeners, this incident has reminded me of a message that I have always told myself in the best and worst of times. My grandmother told it to me when I was just a young boy, and she said that she learned it from her uncle, and that her uncle had learned from some sort of being of pure energy from another galaxy, and that the being learned it from its mother, and so on. She liked to ramble on for hours. Anyway, the message boiled down to this.

“Keep a wary eye on the celery of life.” Isn't that so deep? It means that the good things in life, or the bad things in life, depending on if you like celery or not, must be watched from orbit. I believe that this is wisdom, listeners. The kind of wisdom you get from sitting in my grandmother’s lap and staring out at the unknowable void above. The kind of wisdom that I can share to you, dear listeners, sitting in your cars or on the back porch or lying in bed. And I think that is more of a community than any group bound together by an interest in cheap local wares.

Stay tuned next for the sound of someone eating dinner alone and being completely and utterly aware of their own aloneness.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome To Night Vale is a production of Commonplace Books. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and produced by Joseph Fink. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.
> 
> This episode’s weather was Spooky Scary Skeletons by Andrew Gold.
> 
> Check out commonplacebooks.com for more information on this show, as well as their books on The Unused Story Ideas of H.P. Lovecraft and What It Means To Be A Grown-Up, and while you’re there, consider clicking the donate link, that would be cool of you.
> 
> Today’s proverb: If you find yourself at the edge of the map, keep going. Soon you will exit the physical plane of our map-bound existence entirely.


End file.
